Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Kandinsky Retrospective Brings Modern Masterworks from the Centre Pompidou–Paris to the Frist Center

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts presents Kandinsky: A Retrospective,
an exhibition celebrating a lifetime of work by Wassily Kandinsky
(1866–1944) in the Center’s Ingram Gallery from September 26,
2014–January 4, 2015. Chronicling four decades of artistic
evolution—from early figurative works to exuberant experiments in
abstraction and color—this exhibition invites visitors on an
extraordinary stylistic journey of one of the most innovative modern art
masters of the twentieth century.

Kandinsky: A Retrospective is drawn largely from the
collection of the Centre Pompidou–Paris, and features more than 100
paintings, drawings and other works. A majority of these stunning works
were part of the artist’s personal collection and were given by the
artist’s widow, Nina. Additional paintings from the Milwaukee Art
Museum, including works by Gabriele Münter, and the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York, further an appreciation of the artist in
the context of his contemporaries.

Organized chronologically and spanning the artist’s periods in Russia,
Germany and France, the exhibition begins with paintings from the early
1900s including landscapes, painted folk tales and figurative works.
“These works show how the young artist was influenced by major styles
such as Art Nouveau, Impressionism, Symbolism, and Post-Impressionism,”
says Frist Center Chief Curator Mark Scala. In a period of
experimentation and movement towards more symbolic work, Kandinsky and
other like-minded artists founded Der Blaue Reiter (the Blue Rider) in
1911, a group of artists based in Munich who emphasized the expression
of extreme psychological conditions in their art. “Kandinsky made a
radical move away from recognizable subject matter in the belief that
painting’s most important property was its capacity to dissolve the
outside world and evoke inner conditions,” says Mr. Scala.

Kandinsky felt that music has the capacity to induce spiritual feelings
within listeners through its formal arrangement of melodic sounds,
harmonies and rhythms. He believed that “painters could similarly
‘orchestrate’ the elements of art—color, form, and line—to trigger pure
emotional experiences,” says Mr. Scala. In the theoretical treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art,
Kandinsky wrote that “color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer,
while the soul is a piano of many strings. The artist is the hand
through which the medium of different keys causes the human soul to
vibrate.”

In 1914, Kandinsky returned to Russia, his country of birth, and
married Nina Andreevskaya in 1917. Facing financial hardship and
material shortage during World War I and the Russian Revolution, his
artistic output was somewhat limited. However, the paintings that
Kandinsky did complete, some marking a return to Impressionism, further
demonstrated his belief that art should comfort and convey inner meaning
rather than provoke and express political views, as other avant-garde
Russian artists believed.

Back in Germany during a period of heady intellectualism in the 1920s
at the Bauhaus, a highly influential German art school, Kandinsky
favored geometric works and created monumental decors, including the
large scale mural panels he and his students designed for the Juryfreie Kunstschau—Berlin (Non-juried Art Exhibition—Berlin).
The panels, built for a never-realized museum lounge, were intended to
immerse the viewer in a complete aesthetic experience. A 1977
reconstruction of this room is a highlight of this exhibition, and as
Kandinsky initially desired, lets “the viewer ‘stroll’ within the
picture.” In stark contrast with the rigid geometry of the Bauhaus
period, Kandinsky’s paintings from the end of his life and career in
France are recognized for their joyful use of biomorphic forms, which
reflect the influence of Parisian light and nature as well as
Surrealism.

Exhibition CreditKandinsky: A Retrospective is organized by the Centre Pompidou—Paris and the Milwaukee Art Museum.Sponsor Acknowledgment
Platinum Sponsor: The HCA Foundation on behalf of HCA and TriStar Health
Silver Sponsors: Anne and Joe Russell
Hospitality Sponsor: Union Station Hotel
This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
The Frist Center for the Visual Arts is supported in part by the Metro
Nashville Arts Commission, the Tennessee Arts Commission and the
National Endowment for the Arts.

Exhibition Catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by a 202-page illustrated catalogue
distributed for the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Milwaukee Art Museum
by Yale University Press.

Celebrate the opening of two new exhibitions, Kandinsky: A Retrospective and Helen Pashgian: Light Invisible,
during our Community Opening. This event is free and open to the
public. A cash bar and hors d’oeuvres will be available in the Frist
Center’s Grand Lobby from 6:00–8:30 p.m. Remarks will begin at 7:00 p.m.
in the Frist Center Auditorium. RSVP by Monday, September 15 by calling
615.744.3987 or membership@fristcenter.org. Join us!

Friday, September 26 Curator’s Perspective: Kandinsky: A Retrospective Presented by Angela Lampe, curator, Centre PompidouFrist Center Auditorium 12:00 p.m.Free
There are not many artists who successively adopted three nationalities
during their lives.Wassily Kandinsky was born in Russia, achieved
renown as a pioneer of abstraction and as a teacher at the Bauhaus art
school in Germany, and settled in Paris where he was buried as a French
citizen in 1944. In each country, in each context, he found new
inspiration for his art. This lecture provides a journey through the
life and work of one of the great masters of modern art. Kandinsky: A Retrospective is on view in the Ingram Gallery from September 26, 2014–January 4, 2015.

Tuesday, October 7 Lecture Series: “Food for Thought”11:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m.Lunch begins at 11:30 a.m. with lecture to follow at noon.Frist Center Auditorium
Free with advance registration; lunch and gallery admission included.
Registration for this lecture opens Tuesday, September 16; call
Vanderbilt University at 615.322.8585 to register.
In partnership with Vanderbilt University’s Office of Community,
Neighborhood, and Government Relations, “Food for Thought:
Kandinsky―Exploring Connections between Music and the Visual Arts,” is a
three-part lecture series presented by Vanderbilt professors, Frist
Center curators, and members of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. This
series provides the community at large with an opportunity to build
challenging intellectual connections to the exhibition Kandinsky: A Retrospective. Mark your calendars for our next lectures on Tuesday, November 4 and Tuesday, December 2. Visit http://www.fristcenter.org for lecture details. Kandinsky: A Retrospective is on view in the Ingram Gallery from Friday, September 26, 2014, to Sunday, January 4, 2015.

Thursday, October 9
Curator’s Tour: Kandinsky: A Retrospective Presented by Mark Scala, chief curator, Frist Center
12:00 p.m.
Meet at exhibition entrance
Gallery admission required; members free
Join Frist Center Chief Curator Mark Scala on a tour of Kandinsky: A Retrospective as he explores the work of this influential Russian painter and art theorist throughout his long career.

Sunday, October 19
Artful Tales: “Little Logan Golden Eye”
2:00–3:00 p.m.
Frist Center Auditorium/Studios
Free; seating is first come, first seated
Artful Tales is a FREE family program geared toward everyone ages three
and up! Listen and play along as an art-related story comes to life.
Then, head upstairs to the art studio and make an artwork that relates
to the story.
Enjoy this gentle, original story about a long-awaited child, a magical
fiddle, and the power of believing in yourself and the gifts that you
are given. Afterwards, make paintings that explore the connections
between color and music. This program complements the exhibition Kandinsky: A Retrospective.

Tuesday, November 4 Lecture Series: “Food for Thought”11:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m.Lunch begins at 11:30 a.m. with lecture to follow at noon.Frist Center AuditoriumFree with advance registration; lunch and gallery admission
included. Registration for this lecture opens Tuesday, October 14; call
Vanderbilt University at 615.322.8585 to register.
In partnership with Vanderbilt University’s Office of Community,
Neighborhood, and Government Relations, “Food for Thought:
Kandinsky―Exploring Connections between Music and the Visual Arts,” is a
three-part lecture series presented by Vanderbilt professors, Frist
Center curators, and members of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. This
series provides the community at large with an opportunity to build
challenging intellectual connections to the exhibition Kandinsky: A Retrospective. Mark your calendars for the final lecture on Tuesday, December 2. Visit http://www.fristcenter.org for lecture details. Kandinsky: A Retrospective is on view in the Ingram Gallery from Friday, September 26, 2014, to Sunday, January 4, 2015.

Thursday, November 6 Lecture: “Understanding Kandinsky in His Early Twentieth
Century Context” Frist Center Auditorium Presented by Linda Dalrymple
Henderson, Ph.D., David Bruton, Jr., Centennial Professor in Art History
and Regent’s Outstanding Teaching Professor, The University of Texas,
Austin6:30 p.m. Gallery admission required; members free

Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky was one of the major pioneers in the
emergence of totally abstract painting—art without recognizable subject
matter. Kandinsky believed that, by communicating through color and form
rather than by subject matter, art could achieve a higher level of
spirituality. In an effort to have a transformative artistic effect upon
his audience, Kandinsky grounded this quest in contemporary scientific
ideas and discoveries such as radioactivity. This lecture, presented in
conjunction with the exhibition Kandinsky: A Retrospective,
will explore the cultural context in which Kandinsky worked and place
the artist within this important historical moment. Find more lecture
details at http://www.fristcenter.org.

Friday, November 14 ARTini: Kandinsky: A Retrospective7:00 p.m.Meet at exhibition entranceGallery admission required; members free
Are you curious about art? Do you want to learn more about the content
and concepts behind an artist’s work? If you answered yes to either of
those questions, then the ARTini program is for you! ARTinis are
designed for everyone—from the novice to the connoisseur—and include
informal and insightful conversations that offer a deeper understanding
of one or two works of art in an exhibition. Join Frist Center Associate
Curator of Interpretation Megan Robertson as she explores a few of the
works of this influential Russian painter and art theorist.

Tuesday, November 18 ARTini: Kandinsky: A Retrospective12:00 p.m.Meet at exhibition entranceGallery admission required; members free
Are you curious about art? Do you want to learn more about the content
and concepts behind an artist’s work? If you answered yes to either of
those questions, then the ARTini program is for you! ARTinis are
designed for everyone—from the novice to the connoisseur—and include
informal and insightful conversations that offer a deeper understanding
of one or two works of art in an exhibition. Join Frist Center Associate
Curator of Interpretation Megan Robertson as she explores a few of the
works of this influential Russian painter and art theorist.

Thursday, November 20
Performance: “Blue-Yellow-Red” Presented by Robbie Hunsinger and Missy Raines
6:30 p.m.
Rechter Room
Gallery admission required; members free
Seating is first come, first seated
Interdisciplinary artist and transmedia performer Robbie Lynn Hunsinger
will present an original composition inspired by the art and writings
of Wassily Kandinsky that explores synesthesia and the
interconnectedness of music, visual art and the senses. Hunsinger’s
multimedia concert piece complements the motives and visual materials of
her concurrent interactive installation, Blue-Yellow-Red, on view in
the Frist Center’s Rechter Room from November 13–21, 2014. Virtuoso
bassist Missy Raines will join multi-instrumentalist Hunsinger for this
premiere performance of “Blue-Yellow-Red” for acoustic instruments,
laptop, and projector.

Tuesday, December 2
Lecture Series: “Food for Thought”
11:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
Lunch begins at 11:30 a.m. with lecture to follow at noon.
Frist Center Auditorium
Free with advance registration; lunch and gallery admission included.
Registration for this lecture opens Tuesday, November 11; call
Vanderbilt University at 615.322.8585 to register.
In partnership with Vanderbilt University’s Office of Community,
Neighborhood, and Government Relations, “Food for Thought:
Kandinsky―Exploring Connections between Music and the Visual Arts,” is a
three-part lecture series presented by Vanderbilt professors, Frist
Center curators, and members of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. This
series provides the community at large with an opportunity to build
challenging intellectual connections to the exhibition Kandinsky: A Retrospective. Visit http://www.fristcenter.org for lecture details. Kandinsky: A Retrospective is on view in the Ingram Gallery from Friday, September 26, 2014, to Sunday, January 4, 2015.

The exhibition Thomas Hart Benton’s America Today Mural Rediscovered celebrates the gift of Thomas Hart Benton’s epic mural America Today
from AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company to The Metropolitan Museum of
Art in December 2012. Missouri native Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975)
painted the 10-panel mural cycle in 1930–31 for New York’s New School
for Social Research to adorn the boardroom of its International Style
modernist building on West 12th Street. It was commissioned by the New
School’s director, Alvin Johnson, who had fashioned the school as a
center for progressive thought and education in Greenwich Village.
Depicting a sweeping panorama of American life during the 1920s, America Today ranks among Benton’s most renowned works and as one of the most significant accomplishments in American art of the period.

“This
exhibition is the culmination of an extraordinary partnership between
the Metropolitan and AXA, which donated the mural to the Museum and also
serves as the exhibition’s sponsor. For this, we are tremendously
grateful,” stated Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the
Metropolitan Museum. “The Metropolitan’s presentation of Benton’s great
mural will shed new light on this visually and intellectually
stimulating landmark in American art of the early 1930s, especially as
the Museum will display the mural as the artist originally intended it
to be seen. Positioning the mural’s new home in the context of the
Metropolitan’s diverse collections, the exhibition also tells a unique
story rooted in New York’s own cultural history.”

“The Department of Modern and Contemporary Art is thrilled to debut AXA’s great gift of Benton’s remarkable America Today
mural in the American Wing, where the artist’s expansive vision of life
in the United States will resonate deeply with John Vanderlyn’s grand
panorama, 19th-century genre painting, and Thomas Cole’s philosophical
landscapes, among other treasures,” said Sheena Wagstaff, the Museum’s
Leonard A. Lauder Chairman of Modern and Contemporary Art. “The
exhibition will also remind visitors that the key themes of Benton’s
mural—the heroic proletariat and modern industry—were greatly
significant for artists in a contemporary international context, not
only in the United States, but also in Mexico, and in France between the
world wars.”

The exhibition is made possible by AXA.

America Today was
Benton’s first major mural commission and the most ambitious he ever
executed in New York City. The exhibition will demonstrate how the work
not only marked a turning point in Benton’s career as a
painter—elevating his stature among his peers and critics—but in
hindsight stands out even more as a singular achievement of American art
of the period, one that, among other effects, served to legitimize
modern mural painting as part of the Works Progress Administration’s
Federal Arts Project in the 1930s. Stylistically bold, America Today
stands midway between the artist’s early experiments in abstraction,
signs of which are still evident in the mural, and the expressive
figurative style for which he is best known today. Thematically, the
mural evokes the ebullient belief in American progress that was
characteristic of the 1920s, even as it acknowledges the onset of
economic distress that would characterize life in the following decade.
The commissioning of America Today also marked an important
episode in international modernism; the great Mexican muralist José
Clemente Orozco was commissioned to paint a mural in the New School at
the same time, and the two artists worked on their projects concurrently.

On
view starting September 30 in the Museum’s Erving and Joyce Wolf
Gallery in the American Wing, the exhibition will be organized into
three sections: the first will feature a large selection of Benton’s
studies for the mural; the second will present the mural installed in a
facsimile of its original space at the New School; and the third will
feature related works by other artists, all from the Museum’s
collection.

America Today RediscoveredThe
keystone of the exhibition—the mural—will be installed in a
reconstruction of the 30-by-22-foot boardroom as it existed at the New
School in 1931, allowing viewers to experience the mural cycle as Benton
conceived it. A highlight of this extraordinary opportunity to view the
reconstructed mural in its nearly original setting is the incorporation
of elements that were part of the architect Joseph Urban’s modernist
aesthetic for the New School building, such as the black and red color
scheme he used for the room. Among the mural’s most distinctive features
are the aluminum-leaf wooden moldings, which not only frame the mural
but also create inventive spatial breaks within each large panel. When
the mural was installed at the New School, these moldings echoed the Art
Deco details of Urban’s building design.

The 10 panels—most of
which loom to a height of seven-and-a-half feet—depict a panoramic sweep
of rural and urban life on the eve of the Great Depression. They
capture the tension of early modern America, with allusions to race
relations and social values, while simultaneously celebrating the themes
of industry, progress, and urban life. An array of pre-Depression
types—flappers, farmers, steel workers, stock market tycoons, and others
representing a cross section of American life—will surround visitors in
the mural space and can be further explored in the adjacent galleries,
which will present many of the studies Benton made during his travels
around the United States in the 1920s and to which he referred for the
mural project.

The Mural StudiesThe second
section of the exhibition, featuring Benton’s studies for America Today,
illuminates the deliberative nature of his working process. Besides the
impressions Benton captured during his travels around the U.S. in the
1920s, the studies on view will include character studies in pencil for
figures that appear in the mural, as well as painted compositional
studies for individual mural panels.

Related WorksThe
final section of the exhibition includes works that relate to Benton’s
America Today drawn from the Metropolitan Museum’s Departments of Modern
and Contemporary Art, Photographs, and European Paintings. Highlights
of this section are other works by Benton; renowned photographs by
Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, and Lewis Hine; and, of particular
interest, Jackson Pollock’s Pasiphaë (1943). During the time
Benton was painting America Today, Pollock was his student and served as
a model for his teacher’s mural. The inclusion of Pollock’s abstract
painting in the exhibition provides opportunities to consider the
complex personal and artistic relationship between the two artists.

From the New School to the MetropolitanAfter more than 50 years in the boardroom of the New School, a space that was subsequently used as a classroom, America Today
proved difficult for the school to maintain in perpetuity. In 1982, the
school announced the sale of the mural cycle to the Manhattan art
dealer Maurice Segoura, with the condition that it would not be re-sold
outside the United States or as individual panels. But the work was a
great challenge to sell as a whole, increasing the likelihood that the
panels would be dispersed.

America Today was acquired by
AXA (then Equitable Life) in 1984, in support of efforts on the part of
then-Mayor Edward I. Koch and others to keep it intact and in New York
City. Two years later, after extensive cleaning and restoration, America Today
was unveiled to critical acclaim in AXA’s new headquarters at 787
Seventh Avenue. When the company moved its corporate headquarters again
in 1996, to 1290 Avenue of the Americas, America Today was put on
display in the lobby. There it remained until January 2012, when the
company was asked to remove it to make way for a renovation. The removal
triggered AXA’s decision to place the historic work in a museum
collection, and in December 2012, AXA donated the mural to the
Metropolitan Museum. This transformative gift was facilitated by H.
Barbara Weinberg, Curator Emerita, The American Wing, and Pari Stave,
Senior Administrator in the Museum’s Department of Modern and
Contemporary Art.

More information about the 2012 gift can be found in the Press Room on the Museum’s website.

Exhibition CreditsThomas Hart Benton’s America Today Mural Rediscovered
is organized by Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, the Alice Pratt Brown
Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, and Randall Griffey,
Associate Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, both
of the Metropolitan Museum.

Related ProgramsA
variety of education programs will take place in conjunction with the
exhibition. These include gallery talks, a one-day symposium on March 2,
2015, a Sunday at the Met lecture, and a scholars’ day workshop event. A Musical Tribute to Thomas Hart Benton with jazz pianist Orrin Evans and the Captain Black Big Band will take place on February 20, 2015.

Related PublicationThe exhibition will be accompanied by a Bulletin published
by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Featuring essays by curators
Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser and Randall Griffey, it will be available in
February 2015.